flickr photo credits: (1) spacedlawyer (2) Serenae (3) krutscjo (4) bionicteaching (5) Danny Nicholson
Five Card Story: A Survival Guide for Scholar-Practitioners
a Five Card Flickr story by Tahnee created Jun 02 2025, 04:56:12 pm. Create a new one!
about this story
Some people seem drawn to the tendency to challenge their ability to balance a full time job with a doctoral program. For those individuals, like myself, who could not be dissuaded from surrendering their free time, I provide a guide to help survive the chaos. First, consider treating yourself to great food as a nice reward for completing assignments. A beautiful bowl of pasta can whisper many affirmations if one just listens! When asked if you want cheese with that pasta, listen to the ziti when it says yes. You can double the effectiveness of the soothing effects of pasta if you dine al fresco, preferably in another country. While you absorb vitamin D, your pasta can also relax in the sun and outdoor air. Following your outdoor dining experience, enjoy some adult beverages with friends, family, fellow cohort members, or even complete strangers. You have worked HARD for that adult beverage. Let the beverage fulfill its life purpose by making you feel more relaxed.
Inevitably, you can't consume pasta al fresco while consuming effervescent beverages every day, so continue to haunt the halls of your academic building, conference hall, etc. Pasta and beverages in a different country don't come along for free, so it is important to continue work to afford your stress relief in paragraph 1. In between paragraphs 1 and 2, complete your assignments for your doctoral program. If you can read or write while eating pasta, your have mastered a key self-care technique. I don't recommend assignments with adult beverages, however.
Finally, after 3 years of paragraphs 1 and 2, you will complete your degree-celebrate that win! You may find that your self-care strategies are fully ingrained and you can adapt those to your new life as a scholar-practitioner. For a brief time after you complete your degree, you'll ask yourself, "What should I do with all of this free time?". Sadly, after just a few months, you will likely lose this perspective and begin to wonder why your full time job takes up all of your free time, forgetting that you actually have 10 hours a week more time than you did just a few short months ago. Hopefully, your pasta and beverage consumption can occur without concurrent assignments and your ability to dine al fresco will be uninterrupted for the rest of your life.
share this story
permalink to story: 5card.cogdogblog.com/show.php?id=54233
other stories made from the same cards
- A Survival Guide for Scholar-Practitioners by Tahnee
- A Survival Guide for Scholar-Practitioners by Tahnee
- A Survival Guide for Scholar-Practitioners by Tahnee
Copy/Paste Story
Click once to select, then copy and paste HTML to your own blog/website.
create a different story from these same cards
Do you have another interpretation of the story behind these pictures? Add it to the collection as a new story!
flickr photo credits: (1) spacedlawyer (2) Serenae (3) krutscjo (4) bionicteaching (5) Danny Nicholson